Yellow and Red Beets with Apple, Walnuts and Blue Cheese on Food Day

Today was one of those sunny fall days to enjoy the bright red orange and yellow hues of the leaves turning color while walking along crunching the growing number of leaves already fallen. Today also marks national Food Day then making it the perfect day to visit the local vegetable Farm that hosts its own Farmers Market. Seasonally available in heaped up wood crates under the worn open roof cover, today’s market offered beautiful yellow and red beets along with my favorite, Honey Crisp apples, a good combination for today’s dish, Yellow and Rd Beets with Apple, Walnuts, and Blue Cheese. Food Day is a great reminder day to appreciate many of the nutritional and tasty foods available to us from the farm. The official purpose of Food Day, within the mission of the organization is a nationwide celebration and movement for healthy, affordable, and sustainable food.

There are many ways to get involved in the annual Food Day event, including in your own home or at a local school sharing meal preparation and educating children on the importance of food and health. College Students can coordinate an event at their local university, guidelines are provided on the web site. Initially created through the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Day aims its growth in expanded participation of citizenry throughout the country taking a part among the many elements of and related to the food system from the farm through to agricultural policy.

If you are interested, while your yellow and red beets are cooking in the oven, you can learn more about Food Day and how you can become involved towards next years event here.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put beets into a ceramic baking dish and add water to about an eighth way up the beets. Cover dish with aluminum foil and cook beets for about an hour or more until you can easily insert a fork all the way through. Remove beets from water and set onto a plate to cool a bit then peel the skins. Separately, cut the yellow and red beets into cubes so that the dye from the red beets will not discolor the yellow beets. When ready to serve cut apple into cubes. Toss apple and yellow beets together in half of the dressing. Toss the red beet cubes in with the remaining dressing then mix both color beets and apples together and spoon into either a bowl or a lettuce leaf cup or on top of a salad. Sprinkle chopped roasted walnuts and crumbled blue cheese.

For the Orange Juice and Apple Cider Vinegar Dressing

Whisk together orange juice, apple cider vinegar and olive oil until well mixed together, season with salt and pepper.